


degenerative

by haptic



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-01
Updated: 2018-06-01
Packaged: 2019-05-16 19:49:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14817785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/haptic/pseuds/haptic
Summary: Carmilla writes an open letter to Laura. And anyone who will listen.





	degenerative

I heard you eventually settled down. I lost track of you around age 25. I recoiled into myself, occupying my time with the things I knew you always hated about me. I slept around, slept on the streets, fed when I wanted and all but lost touch with everyone in my miserable life.

It was only when I came across a newspaper segment that highlighted Lafontaine’s new discovery in the field of gravitational forces that I realized what I had lost track of.

It wasn’t hard for me to find them; they had wed with Perry and had a single, red-headed child in their hometown. I inquired at their front porch about you, feeling nervous for once in eleven years. Their tender, and nearly nauseatingly kind face, informed me you had moved out of the country. Lafontaine told me you two hadn’t spoke since your wedding night, five years ago. I could hear behind them in their home the sweet call of Perry, who I hadn’t realized I had missed. Lafontaine apologized, said something about their son’s soccer practice and all but shut the door in my face as they hollered back.

I was used to this feeling of being shut out. I had felt it for many centuries. But now, it seemed to light the kindle of a flame within me. I huffed off their porch and used the few and far between clues they granted me to find you once more. I didn’t understand why and I still don’t. Why couldn’t I have let you go by now?

Mattie helped me put the pieces together. She had insight to several countries’ citizen databases. We found a record of your marriage. Your maiden name was gone, replaced by a man’s surname. How traditional.

I waited three days to type your new full name into the search engine again. I knew I could potentially find what I had feared.

Written in pen was the name of your child. I had never felt so ill. The paper listed your husband as the father, rightly so, and your (new) name as the mother. You named her Grace. She was born in June when you were 28. The child was turning five then, and that knowledge of the speed of life took me by surprise. How I longed for my own life to speed by. Instead it has always been a slow ticking on an infinite loop. You always made me realize that, now more than ever.

I didn’t look for your name for another year. When I did, I saw a new birth certificate. You had a new baby boy. You named him William.

Did you ever think of me? Wonder where I had gone during this time? My heart told me it was a moot point. Nothing could change how reality had progressed. Even a vampire can’t make up for lost time, even with an ever-growing expanse of time laid out in front of them.

I knew where you lived after some light snooping. I knew I could go. I could be on a plane, then a train, take a taxi and arrive at your door within two days. Nothing frightened me more.

So I didn’t. I didn’t go. I did not go find you. The idea of walking into your crafted bubble of human husband, human children and human Laura, did nothing but send cold lightening through my dead veins encouraging me to stay. Stay where I was. Stay doing what I had done for so long.

Oh, Laura. If only you could know how my life ached for you. If ever this world had a perfectly miserable creature, it was me during this time. I stayed this way for months, which ticked into years.

Years. You were 20 when we fell apart. When I ultimately purchased that plane ride, you were 38. I figured I could just be in your country. I didn’t have to take that train, or that taxi. Maybe proximity was all I needed.

Which seemed to work for a few months. I count those months as some of my happiest. The idea of being close to you again had thrilled me. The possibility that you were around each corner enticed me to round them all. Each night I’d count the stars above and wonder if this constellation was the one you were gazing upon. Or perhaps one of your offspring were. They were a piece of you. I longed for their connection too.

I think I lost any semblance of my mind during this time, Laura. I had truly believed you could feel my closeness, feel my longing to be near you. I convinced myself one night you could read my thoughts as I projected them. I mentally gave you the option to meet me on the train station at noon. I was convinced you would be there. You never arrived. I watched the stars that night.

The next morning I took that train. I took that taxi. I found your door.

Your scent still lingered. I rang the doorbell with quivering fingers. Gulped as I heard heels on the tile floor within. But it wasn’t your scent that opened the door, it wasn’t your face I was greeted with.

Or your voice that said,

“Hello?”

It was a young teenaged girl’s. She looked to be around 16. I reeled at the idea she was yours, but I knew very well your young Grace was still only 10.

It clicked then. This must be your babysitter. Only then did my ears pick up the sound of a child bustling in a nearby room, and a television playing a children’s show.

“Is Laura home?” I had managed to meekly ask this young, and very confused, girl you had employed.

Confusion left her face and a dutiful expression came over her as she told me,

“No, her and Mr. Provost are out for date-night, actually. Should I tell them you stopped by?”

I told her to tell you Ann stopped by. I hope you weren’t too confused about who Ann was. I wasn’t ready yet. I was starting to believe that no matter how close I was to you, perhaps it was all wrong.

When the babysitter closed the door on me, I wandered off. I sat across the street in the park as you drove up with your husband in your small four-door sedan. The backseat littered with children’s toys and grime. I watched him open your door for you. I watched your head appear above the car. Your hair the same wavy blonde I had remembered fondly running my fingers through. Your face, however, seemed weathered by the years. Not intensely so, however. I must say for growing old, you seemed to be doing it gracefully.

And you still had your smile. It killed me. You smiled at your husband, who looked to have shaved this morning just for this occasion with you. He seemed caring, loving, thoughtful. I wished him a painful death for a few moments as the sobs reared up, but squashed that malice down as I realized I had done this.

I let you go. I never found you as you began your life. I fled when I should have hunkered down to weather the storm.

He held your hand, you walked through that threshold of your modest home. I watched through the window as you picked up your youngest, as he sat on your lap.You kissed his forehead. Your babysitter exited the front. You watched her walk away through the window.

Perhaps it was my lost mind conjuring up the idea. But if I wasn’t mistaken, I could have sworn your eyes locked on me across the street, on that park bench, dressed in black and hidden in the shadows. But someone called you from across the house, you hesitated to look away from where you must have felt my piercing gaze emanating from. Those two seconds left and so did you. Away from the window.

I could have simply knocked then. Met your family, held you for a moment. You were still my Laura then.

I stayed in your country. In fact, I began a new passion. I practiced in the field of nature photography. Perhaps you had heard of me, I was listed as C. Nietsnrak.Not the most clever, but I figured only you could have guessed it. I made many professional friends who I grew attached to during this time, something strange and out of character for me. In fact, I found a woman named Daniella I was enthralled with too. I let her know my true self, she accepted me and I would make love to her each night she was home from her business travels. I gave her the parts of me I should have given you. For that, I apologize.

She was diagnosed with stage-four blood cancer. Ironic. She passed away after a three year long battle. I held her hand as she passed away, after a coma overtook her frail body.

She never knew of the nights I would spend around your apartment, inching ever closer to letting you know of my presence. Often, I would catch you gazing out your window, as if looking for something. I watched your children have birthday parties during those years I spent with another woman. I ached for you each night I was in her bed, or inside her. She was in her twenties but your body, however time had changed it, was still the one I envisioned and longed for.

After my lover’s death, purely out of sheer accident like the rounding of those corners, I found you walking among a street market. You were alone. Your children enrolled in school, your husband at his day job. You strolled carelessly, picking up pears, examining plantains and homemade goods. You purchased a few treats. I noticed in more detail the way your hands had lost their fullness over time, revealing the bones and veins that comprised them. I could watch the tendons flex and relax as you gripped fruits or small items.

I couldn’t dare disrupt your day. I turned my back on you and briskly walked as far as I could.

How do I explain the next twenty years that passed after that moment? Time became too unfair for me. I could no longer sit outside your home, waiting for the courage that would never come to me to reconnect with you. I would occasionally glance in a school yearbook at the photos of your children, all rosy-cheeked and smiles. They had your eyes, through and through. Grace graduated high school. I was there at the graduation. I heard them announce she was admitted to a prime, competitive college two cities over. William had his own triumphs. He never seemed to be the most studious but secured an athletic scholarship to a local college. Mid-college the newspaper reported that their very own William Provost was recruited to the national football league.

I never took up another lover after Daniella, Laura. I never could. News of your family was the most excitement I could bear. My life simply revolved around avoiding your family and you, and then being sucked back into the allure of it all. I wished to be a fly on the wall, but I also wished the swatter would come down upon me.

Your husband retired. I’m sure you both paid off your home. You aged more and more each time I would see you.

I remember the first day I heard your confusion, Laura. Your husband seemed all but panicked to help. I had simply passed by your home as I did every end of May, to ensure all was the same as it had been for so, so many years.

I peered in. Your withered face stared back directly at me. I assessed if I was in the shadows as I typically am. I wasn’t. You could see me. I was sure of it.

I froze and listened.

“Have you ever seen? What if she wasn’t?”

Your voice had the characteristically frail, old woman tone to it. Underneath I could still pinpoint the sickly sweet, luring voice of my Laura. But your words did not make sense.

“What are you saying, Laura?”, your husband asked.

“If she was, could we have then?”

Your eyes were still locked on me. There was no recollection behind them.

I felt true fear then. I counted the years. You were only 63. This was too early.

Next thing I knew, I was stalking around that old park every week. Watching as your faithful husband, even in his old age, would transport you to and from doctor appointments. All the while, he would coo at you and your words would mash together on themselves like a freight-train plowing into a boulder. Or at least that’s what it felt like in my heart when I heard you mutter,

“Evan? Please come tell her she can. I never knew until now but I can’t believe she hasn’t.”

At this point, you still knew his name.

Your children would visit. Their youth and naivety would occasionally manifest as anger and denial as you would look at them directly and speak to them as if they were strangers.

“Mom! It’s your son, William. Please mom, don’t you remember me?”

William cried the most. Grace would hold her tongue and tears. Your husband, who I had come to care for, would sit at night holding your hand as you two watched television. I envied him, but was grateful he was there for you. You would half-follow the program until something on it triggered you.

“There, right there. Oh, where are we going? Styria? I haven’t found my shoes yet..”

You increasingly became more agitated. Your husband became frustrated. I could see the disease was doing what all productive diseases do: destroy.

Your children started their own families then. You were always around, but never quite there. Your husband left to the store one night. I sat guard outside your home. He had left you alone, something he very well could do, but something he very much should not do. I didn’t pay much mind, he too was of frail mind.

Dealing with a dementia patient does take a lot of effort, especially when you yourself are elderly.

I decided this was the time, Laura. I’m so sorry I decided this was the time. The time was many years ago. The time was when we were still at Silas, when you could yell and cry at me all you wanted for all the right reasons.

I knocked on your front door. It did take you a few moments.

I could have died right then, it would have saved me the wretched heartbreak that came when the door swung open and you said,

“Carm?”

Your voice, tainted with age and frailty, sounded too familiar to the way you had spoken my name decades ago.

I don’t know how I kept my composure. I’m sure I didn’t. Instead, I fell forward into your frame. My arms wrapped around your graying head of hair and I made sure to embrace you the way I had longed to each night I sat across the street from you.

I heard your mumbles against my shoulder. To my amazement, as I embraced you, you lifted your arms and hugged me back. My sobs ripped through for a few moments.

To have and to hold. Those were not my vows. I never made those vows. Time machines don’t exist for vampires either, you know that right, Laura? I could never make those vows to you. It was past your time. Yet, here I was. Having and holding you.

I pulled back. You looked up at me. Age had taken a few inches off you. You smiled at me. I kissed your forehead tenderly.

“Grace?”

You asked that as you stared at me. You asked me if I was your daughter. I felt the world coming to crash down on me. That fly-swatter taking aim. That freight-train coming full speed. I backed up.

“Laura, I love you.”

I told you I loved you. What else could I have said?

“I love you too.”

You said it mechanically. You always do. You know that phrase, you know it makes people happy when you say it back to them. So you say it often. To Grace, to William, to Evan, to all the doctors, to the grocery clerk.

I try to lose myself in your eyes. In your gaze. But there’s nowhere to go. I make the decision.

“Goodbye, Laura.”

“See you tomorrow, dear.”, you tell me.

With fire in my veins and sorrow flooding every inch of my body, my back turns to you once again. As it did in the market, or forty-some odd years ago as I stormed off during that argument.

Forgive me, Laura.

Today I’m at your funeral. Everyone is crying today. Your husband is in a wheelchair. Your children have their partners at their side. Grace is pregnant, Laura. I wonder if you ever got to know that.

They say you passed away in your sleep two years after I told you goodbye. I haven’t seen you since. Now, all I can see is the coffin they chose, and the memorial picture set aside.

Your body gets returned to the Earth. No one asks me who I am, or how I’m related to you. I’m a fly on the wall.

I’m sorry, Laura.


End file.
